A new release of KUPS, designed for KDE2, is available. "KUPS is a powerful and easy-to-use CUPS front-end for KDE. CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) is a new printing system under UNIX which is completely network transparent and uses the IPP protocol. It supports a large range of printers through various available drivers and ghostscript. This printing system also allows to specify a lot of printing options such as number of copies, page collation, number of pages per sheet, various image options, text syntax coloring, and a set of specific printers options described in a driver file (PPD). Drivers are already available for most common printers." Lots of great screenshots (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

The problem with CUPS is that they open source it and everything, but they give you only the HP drivers for free. If you want to print on non HP (or HP compatible) printer - then you'll have to buy driver from them.

Ofcourse, there a specific FTP site which you can grab the printer driver without paying - but thats call cheating..

With LPR today, we don't have all the printer functions support, but we do have support for non HP printers for free

In fact CUPS is one of the best documented GPL programs. Just have a look at the CUPS.org documentation Website. Not only will you find Users' and Administrators' Manuals, but also Software Design Description, Interface Design Description, Software Performance Specification -- information you rarely find in a comprehensive form for other projects; you'll need to be a programmer and understand to read the source (well, I don't).

CUPS is based on the new RFC standard for network printing, the IPP (Internet Printing Protocol). IPP is designed to support cross-platform, cross sub-net printing.

Sooner or later, IPP will be replacing LPR/LPD. LPR/LPD doesn't support encryption, nor authentification nor bi-directional messaging between print server and client about status of device or print job. IPP cares for all this. IPP is an extension of HTTP 1.1. As such it fits into all the other internet standards. It uses URIs/URLs to adress everything: printers, jobs, status-enquiries. It supports TLS (or SSL3) for encryption of print jobs, HTTP basic and digest user authentification, LDAP for directory services to communicate infos about printers, drivers, costs, device capabilities..

IPP has been designed by the "Printer Working Group" (PWG) which is an organisation of the most important device vendors. It now has the support of virtually all the industry, plus that of Sun, Novell, Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Apple...

We should be proud to have CUPS ("Common UNIX Printing System", which by the way should also compile on the MS Windows platform) for Linux as it is the most advanced implementation for IPP so far on _a_l_l_ platforms. It is regarded by the PWG as a reference. With CUPS, Linux (and KDE) can close the gap in the field of printing in relation to other OSes and even take the lead.

By the way: Easy Software Products, the (very small) company who started CUPS and also sell a commercial extension (called ESP PrintPro, which includes a GUI plus support for 2300 printers) not only made CUPS GPL after a debate on the pages of "Linux Today" 16 months ago: they have donated other software to the Free Software Community like the ESP Package Manager, HTMLDOC (a pdf-generator), LIBCGI (a CGI interface library for C and C++ programs), and last but not least the print plugin for the GIMP which formed the basis for the "gimp-print" project, which is about to release a ghostscript driver (to be used with CUPS or other spooling systems) that will match any native Windows driver in output quality for inkjet printers (especially Epsons).

CUPS now is the default printing system for easyLinuy 2.2. It will have the same role in Mandrake 7.2. More distributions will come in soon.

CUPS for the moment comes with (not just HP compatible as you said, but) 6 generic drivers which support all Laserjet, Desjet, Epson Stylus Color, Epson Stylus Photo, Epson 9 and Epson 24 pin compatible printers. In addition you may use all of the ghostscript filters (with the quality those provide). Last not least: CUPS supports _a_l_l_ present and future PostScript printers to their full capabilities, as it is able to parse and interpret the manufacturer-provided PPDs (PostScript Printer Descriptions) as they are use on MS Windows or Apple MacOS platforms -- just use the driver CD from there to grap the PPD and use it 1:1 with CUPS!

Look at http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html for directions of using Grant Taylor's (yes, the author of the "Linux Printing HOWTO") cups-o-matic script which creates a printer configuration file ("PPD") for any supported ghostscript filter/printer device combination online for you so you can print using CUPS on _n_o_n_-PostScript devices. KUPS and QtCUPS will give you an appropriate GUI for all that -- if you don't want to use the Command Line or Web interfaces of CUPS. I guess you'll at least start to like the web one, if you need to reconfigure a printer or your print server (or add or delete a printer or job) from a remote site...

Surely, CUPS is the future in Linux printing, be it in large networks or at home.

I'll try to help your friend to set up his default A4 page if he/you tell me more details. Hint: did he try to go to "http://localhost:631/printers/" to find his newly installed printer and click on "Configure printer" to set his default page size?

I am not able to print remotely in my LAN.I am running CUPS.Other system also
on which printer is configured is running CUPS.What has to be specified
in device URL when configuring th netscape/localhost:631.http://hostname:631/ipp/port1
ipp://hostname/ipp/port1
are not working

You'll find it at http://localhost:631/documentation.html (if the CUPS-Daemon is running) as HTML or PDF. If the Daemon is stopped, it's in the filesystem, probably at "/usr/share/doc/cups/sam.html" (you don't even give your Linux Distribution nor CUPS version nor installation mode to be sure to guess right).

to print to a remote printer configured on a CUPS server. This is normally "discovered" by the client automatically if the "server" serves, i.e. if the server tells the LAN via browsing broadcasts about his available printers.

To learn more about the configurations read "man cupsd.conf" and the "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf" itself. It is very well commented (although some points of what it says are "defaults" are changed); so to be sure just un-comment everything you want to be active and re-start the cupsd.

Hi,
I also faced the same problem initially.Pls make sure that you have the pstoraster package In case you dont have it pls download ghostscript and reinstall it.I tried to just plug in the pstoraster but it did not help,may be I was wrong in the way that I did.I had just downloaded it and changed the permission to make it executable.

Then on the GUI do give socket://remotenetworkprinter:port .Then it should run.Currently I am facing the problem that the lp command does not work and says cannot find the printer,but I am able to print through the graphical interface.Pls note that depending on whether it is socket://hostname:port or http://hostname:port or something else the time to print could take longer.This is my experience.

Personally, I have found CUPS to be the easiest to configure of all printing solutions across multiple platforms, even with the myriad of printers i use over a plethora of protocols, and have never been disappointed with it. I would like to encourage Easy Software Products for the actual client, the developers of gimp-print and the Kompany for the seamless integration into KDE, with their foresight of CUPS future importance, which shadows its present importance even. Well, anyway, just 2¢ (tuppence) from someone who has battled BSD print spooler, and many others and went sick of the inherent hairloss in that situation.

Personally, I have found CUPS to be the easiest to configure of all printing solutions across multiple platforms, even with the myriad of printers i use over a plethora of protocols, and have never been disappointed with it. I would like to encourage Easy Software Products for the actual client, the developers of gimp-print and the Kompany for the seamless integration into KDE, with their foresight of CUPS future importance, which shadows its present importance even. Well, anyway, just 2¢ (tuppence) from someone who has battled BSD print spooler, and many others and went sick of the inherent hairloss in that situation.

I have a problem with cups. It stops taking printing every early in the morning around 5 o'clock. I have restarted cups. But I cannot telnet on localhost:631 port. But when I had restarted the server the problem resolved. and every I have to restart the server at once which I should not do and it is not a permenent solution.
When I am trying to use it from browser it gives an error "The connection was refused when attempting to localhost:631.
I think ther is a problem something with 631 port (I guess). Because I cannot telnet on 631 port also.

I am a Mac OS X user, migrating recently from OS9. On OS 9 my Epson RIP Stylus 1520 (postscript printer) worked beautifully. I have been looking at the CUPS site trying figure out just what I download and install to get the same results on this printer on the Mac OS X (10.2.4).

The biggest problem are those printers which don't understand postscript. There are no high-quality drivers (filters) included in the CUPS (GPL'd) package which can nearly be compared with native windows(tm) drivers. If Linux want's to win the desktop-battle, we need the support of the printer-companies, writing (hopefully open-source) drivers for CUPS.

Is anybody out there, who knows how to start such a "CALL for native drivers" project??!!!

The biggest problem are those printers which don't understand postscript. There are no high-quality drivers (filters) included in the CUPS (GPL'd) package which can nearly be compared with native windows(tm) drivers. If Linux want's to win the desktop-battle, we need the support of the printer-companies, writing (hopefully open-source) drivers for CUPS.

Is anybody out there, who knows how to start such a "CALL for native drivers" project??!!!

The biggest problem are those printers which don't understand postscript. There are no high-quality drivers (filters) included in the CUPS (GPL'd) package which can nearly be compared with native windows(tm) drivers. If Linux want's to win the desktop-battle, we need the support of the printer-companies, writing (hopefully open-source) drivers for CUPS.

Is anybody out there, who knows how to start such a "CALL for native drivers" project??!!!